haha, the red livery have been appeared in HK since the early 50's (private cab of HK Island, in Kowloon they are all Red and Black) (but taxi company have their own livery) and after the cross harbour tunnel built, they standardlise the livery in 1975 (red for Urban Cab), and in 1977 (Green cab start to appear, and in 1980 Blue cab for lantau island start to appear too)
btw, I think if the cab in S'pore get the alloy and A/T box and also the extra wide left door with swing out seats, that would be cool.
Some historical photo of HK cab:
In the 50's most private cabs are the same as to current colour, but company cabs are different, and Kowloon cab are mostly black (they have separate fare structure too, HK cab is more expensive then Kowloon Cab.
50's picture of a UK made Cab (forgot it's name) in Causeway bay HK.
mid 60's picture of Mercedes 180 and 190 taxis near Central (notice both livery are similar to what we have now)
1971 picture of Kowloon cab, notice the totally different colour then the HKI taxis, the red one/ red black once are private own, while the green once are own by company. (also insome picture you can see all red taxi-like vehicle with Red license plate, those are Private hire car (which was outlaw in 1977 and convert to taxis) and in 1983 the government changed all classes of vehicle's plate to the front white and rear yellow configuation.
Picture taken probably during the late 1972-1975 era, the cab closer to the front are a HK island taxi (where around 1970 they standalise all their colour to the current colour), while you can still see the Kowloon taxi at the back are still all red. (Also, this is probably the time that both HKI and Kowloon taxi have standalise their fares too)
BTW; notice that in the 50's and 60's cabs are mostly UK made brands or Mercedes, and in 70's almost 85% of cab is Nissan (Datsuns). in 2006, 98% of cabs are now toyota.
Even Singapore's SMART automobile taxi also same like this one in HK ..... who copying who ?????
Originally posted by Poolman:
Even Singapore's SMART automobile taxi also same like this one in HK ..... who copying who ?????
